


White Pony

by thepurpleswitch (andchimeras)



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Alternate Reality, Angst, Choices, F/M, Gen, Season/Series 01-02 Hiatus
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2006-08-21
Updated: 2006-08-21
Packaged: 2017-10-09 17:03:52
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,907
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/89680
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/andchimeras/pseuds/thepurpleswitch
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"Jess smiles down at him, holding his half-eaten cookie." Sam wakes up and it's like the last year of his life never happened--like his entire life never happened. An AU's AU.</p>
            </blockquote>





	White Pony

**Author's Note:**

> Beta by CGB/Mandysbitch.

Somewhere outside Bee Caves, Texas, early November. Dean has just put two good-sized holes in some sort of mud thing, causing it to explode. Sam is covered in foul-smelling, slimy dirt, lying in a fetid puddle. He hopes that whatever the mud thing was, it wasn't contagious.

Dean stands over him, silhouetted by the Impala's high beams. He holds one hand out to Sam, his shotgun in the other. Sam wipes a muddy hand on his muddy jeans and lets Dean help him up.

They limp--Sam limps, Dean swaggers--back to the car. The trunk is already popped, and they put their weapons in. Dean draws a holey plaid blanket over the cache, then slams the trunk closed.

Sam leans against the car for a moment, just a minute to gather himself after almost dying, again. Dean leans beside him, and Sam looks at him, meeting his eyes, knowing he should say thank you, which is odd, because he's never thought that, not ever. Never had to say it. Dean knows, must know, every time, that Sam is grateful beyond reckoning. Right?

"Ride the white pony," Dean says, and nods sharply, once, as if he's said something profound, then looks away into the dark of the dry night.

"What?" Sam says.

"When the time comes," Dean says, "ride the white pony."

Sam blinks. He turns his head, surveys the immense blackness beyond the car, winking winter-white stars the only difference between the dark earth and the dark sky.

"Seriously," Sam says, "I have no idea--"

"Time to get up," Dean says, taking his arm in a light grip, giving him a shake. "Come on, Sam--"

"Sam," Jess says.

The ceiling is a blare of white on his sensitive eyes. He closes them again and groans.

"You only ate one cookie, barely, you must have been really tired," Jess says. She touches his forehead gently.

Sam's eyes snap open again. Jess smiles down at him, holding his half-eaten cookie. She leans over and kisses him good morning and she tastes like mint and chocolate chip cookies. God, she tastes like herself, like every dream he's had of her since she--

He swallows. She gets up from the bed, in her white nightgown, hair all down her back, alive. "Jess?"

"Yeah?" she says. She pulls out drawers on her dresser as if it's a Monday morning.

"What--" He doesn't know what to say. Has no idea--"What day is it?"

She shakes her head, her hair moving over her shoulders in that way he's missed so much; always hated when she wore it up. "It's Monday, Sam. You're going to be late if you don't get up. You smell like you haven't showered since you left."

He hadn't, of course, didn't shower that weekend, didn't have time and lord knew Dean never cared what he smelled like unless it was something dead got splattered all over him. Mud thing. He'd dreamed they'd just killed a mud thing. Dean had killed it, just roared up in the car and jumped out and rocksalted it to hell and back, which is weird, because Sam is always doing the rescuing in his hunting dreams, and it wasn't a dream, anyway.

It _was_ real. It was the last two days of his life, figuring out what was sucking homeless people and small animals right off the streets, finding it, trying to kill it with a drought-summoning incantation because Dean was off with some waitress or bartender or switchboard operator, along with all the guns.

It was real, the last _year_ of his life. Wasn't it?

Jess sits on the bed again and leans over him, a serious look on her face. "Get. Up," she says. "I can give you a ride to campus if you get. Up. Right. Now. And you can tell me all about standing between your dad and one six-pack too many on his hunting trip."

"Okay," he says weakly. It can't have been a dream.

She smiles again, always smiling, and kisses him on the nose. He always hated it when she did that, has missed it so much since she died.

Jess leaves and he's afraid to move, so he lays on their bed, afraid to blink, so he stares at the empty, unscorched ceiling. Afraid to close his eyes, because when he opens them, there might be blood on his face and she might be--

"Sam Winchester!" she yells from the living room. "I don't hear a shower running!"

"I'm up!" he calls automatically, and rolls to his feet, shedding his jacket and toeing off his runners. He blinks, without thinking.

Nothing changes.

 

Jess drops him on Alvarado. She says, "Good luck, Sam," and kisses him on the cheek.

"Thanks," he says. He gets out of the car and closes the door firmly. Jess waves at him as she drives away. He waves back and watches her Honda until it's turned onto Campus Drive.

He takes his phone out of the inner pocket on his suit jacket and scrolls through his contacts, pausing when there are two phone numbers listed under "Dad": cell and work. He swallows and keeps scrolling, confused because he doesn't know anybody named Dan, and then he stops at "Dean". Three numbers for him: cell, home, and work.

He starts walking, holding the phone in front of him like a dowsing rod or an EMF meter, staring at the screen. He turns up Nathan Abbott Way. He isn't struck by the edifice of the law school building the way he usually is. He stops before going inside and sits on a bench. He scrolls through Dean's three phone numbers. Cell, home, work; cell, home, work. He doesn't recognize any of them, but he knows the area code is in California.

He calls Dean at work, since it's ten in the morning.

"Pleasanton _Sentinel-Herald_, Alicia speaking. How can I help you?"

"I'm looking for Dean Winchester--I'm--"

"I'm sorry, Dean isn't in today. Would you like his voicemail?"

"No," he says, "I'll try him--I'll try him at home. Thanks."

"You're welcome, have a nice day," Alicia says, and hangs up.

Sam's phone says he has ten minutes until his meeting. His watch, a present from Jess's parents on his twenty-first birthday, says seven minutes. He scrolls to Dean's home number--_Dean's home number_\--and presses "send."

On the third ring there is a long pause, then he hears Dean's voice. He sounds relaxed, comfortable, strange. "If you can operate a telephone, you know what to do after the beep, and you know that I'll get back to you when I can."

Sam can't speak for about five seconds after the tone. Finally, he says, "Uh, Dean, it's me. Sam. Um. I need to talk to you. It's kind of--it's important." He doesn't know what else he can say; is this Dean _his_ Dean? Did he wake up last year too? Is he just as confused? Will he understand? Will he know? "Just call me as soon as you can." He remembers that normal people say goodbye at the end of a call. "Bye," he adds, and presses "end."

He considers trying Dean's cell number. He baulks. He can't deal with it. He turns his phone off and goes inside.

 

Sam walks out of the Stanford Law School building with his scholarship. The calm green lawn seems plastic, the building like a cardboard model; Jess using a penknife to cut tiny scale windows for a term project last April. He'd pointed out that she had too many panes in the windows and she'd laughed and said that's why she'd chosen the law school: she could count on him to catch her mistakes.

He can't help but feel the unreality of it. He gave up the anticipation and the yearning of finishing his degree and getting into law school and his scholarship. He gave it all up a year ago. And now--he didn't? He hasn't? He won't?

He turns his phone back on and there is a message waiting for him, from "Dean (Home)". He follows the voicemail prompts until he hears it, this familiar voice--

"Hey Sam. Got your message--miss me already? Hope your meeting went okay. I'm at home now. Give me a shout."

Sounds like Dean. Says "Sam" just like Dean does. Can't possibly be Dean, because: Dean would have complained about Sam leaving a message and then not answering his own damn phone; Dean would not openly, easily wish him luck; Dean doesn't have a home to be at; Dean would not say _give me a shout_, for god's sake.

So it's not Dean. Or, it's not the Dean that goes with the Sam that he is, who does not belong here. Unless he really did dream a whole year, his whole life, because Dean doesn't work for money. Dean doesn't have an office, no more than he has a home.

He leans a hand against the side of the building and rubs his wrist over his eyes. He's not into science fiction enough to enjoy this or make any sense of it.

 

Sam goes home and changes out of his suit, and rushes back to campus for his philosophy lecture. He makes jokes with Hyung about existential terrorists. He doesn't call Dean back.

He gets Subway for dinner, remembers Dean calling him a woman for eating there in St. Louis, two months ago; the sandwich maker was a Hispanic girl with long curly hair who smiled widely at Sam and ignored Dean. Sam goes to his early American literature study group, Chris is still hungover three days after Hallowe'en, and afterwards Jess picks him up and they go for drinks at The Treehouse.

At home, Jess is happily, sweetly drunk. She giggles and pulls at his sweatshirt and he doesn't think about calling Dean back.

"I love you," she says in his ear. "I'm so proud of you."

Her breath is Bacardi's lime cooler and her neck is the passionfruit spray he bought her for her birthday. He slips his fingers under the back of her shirt, touches the base of her spine and she sighs and kisses him, her mouth still cool from ice. She draws him into the bedroom with her soft hands on his neck and her mouth. She sits on the bed with a bounce and a laugh and unbuckles his belt.

His vision is golden-grey and blurred with beer; he doesn't let himself think of her dead, doesn't let himself remember that she is dead and this is not real, can't be--

She looks up at him, head tilted, her fingers slipping into his boxers and she smiles lazily, sweetly. "Hi baby," she says.

He touches her cheek, the pointed corner of her smile. "Hi," he says. "Love you." Her smile widens, her eyes crinkled and sparkling and god, not just a memory, much too real and much too _her_ to be a dream.

She pushes up his sweatshirt and bites at his stomach and Sam stops thinking.

 

*

 

Sam opens his eyes when he hears the shot, feels mud splatter all over him. He wipes his face a little cleaner. Dean is standing over him, shotgun in one hand, the other held out. Sam lets Dean pull him up.

They walk to the car. Sam favours his right leg. He throws his soaked notebook and plastic bottle of holy water into the popped trunk. Dean's gun thuds beside it and is covered by a plaid blanket. Sam turns away while Dean slams the trunk closed.

They lean back on the car, no stars out tonight, the Impala's tail lights casting blood red on the grass all around.

Sam remembers this dream, and that it wasn't supposed to be a dream at all. He's never lucid dreamed before. He lets his confusion show as he turns to Dean--

"Time's going to come," Dean says.

"Okay--" Sam says.

"Ride the white pony," Dean says.

"Right," Sam says, he remembers this instruction. He looks around the field, empty except for them, the mud thing's drying corpse, and the car. "What pony?"

Dean rolls his eyes. "White pony. It'll come. Be patient for once in your goddamned life."

Sam doesn't mention that Dean is sounding way too much like Dad for comfort. He crosses his ankles and waits.

Dean scratches his neck and checks his watch.

Sam notices that the air is weird, feels like inside air, not outside air. There's no breeze. He looks up at the sky. There doesn't seem to be any clouds for the stars to hide behind, and there is no moon.

Dean stands up, away from the bumper and straightens his jacket. "Ride it," he says to Sam, and walks away.

For a long while Sam just watches him slowly fade into the darkness, the night leeching around him until he's gone. About the same time, Sam hears loping footsteps. Hoofbeats, slow, on the packed earth and grass. Sam turns towards the sound.

Shining in the dark, a white pony is standing ten feet from him. It turns its head to look at him, its eyes a depthless black. Sam feels his heart thundering in his chest; his breath deepens, quickens, like he's getting ready to run.

He backs up a step, backs into the car. The pony comes a step closer. It turns fully, presenting its profile, the lean line of its back, haunches, belly, ribs, the arch of its neck, sleek, slippery fall of mane over its shoulders. No shadows on it, just white and less white and more white. It would be blinding on a moonlit night.

Sam puts his hand on the trunk. The pony nods, seems to beckon. Sam hears, "Ride," in a voice like low wind through dry grass.

A pit in his stomach, filled with dread and _no_.

He shakes his head. The pony nods again and sidles half a step closer.

Sam opens his mouth, gasping, every cell in his body wanting to get away, separate and meet on the other side of the car if need be. "No," he says, panicked.

The pony brings its head up high, stamps a back hoof, and trots away. The receding hoofbeats fade into Sam's heartbeat. He can feel it in his throat, in his hands, in the ground beneath his feet.

It stutters, starts fast and loud again.

"Sam," Jess groans. "Answer the door."

Sam opens his eyes and he can hear the windows shaking with the pounding on the door. He stumbles out of bed and pulls on a pair of sweatpants from the floor. He holds onto the wall as he walks.

When he opens the door, he sees their landlord, Phil, hammering at the wall down the hallway.

"Phil," Sam rasps, and gets no response. He clears his throat and tries a little louder, "Phil?"

The hammering stops and Phil looks around, grins at Sam. "Morning, buddy," he says. He's a jovial man, as tall as Sam and about three times his weight, bald. He wears a bright orange quilted vest. The blare of the colour hurts Sam's eyes, makes him feel his low, steady hangover shifting, pressing at his forehead.

"What's going on," Sam says, squinting. "It's pretty early--"

"Fiddling with the security system," Phil says. Sam isn't surprised by the hammering. The only tools Phil seems to know how to use are a hammer and a plumber's snake. "Jess told me somebody got in here on Friday night."

Like an alarm would have stopped Dean, even if it was working. "That was just my brother--"

Phil's eyebrows draw together. "Who, Dean? Nah--"

"Yeah, he was picking me up--" Phil never met Dean, goddammit. "We went to--meet our dad, go hunting--"

Phil waves a hand dismissively. "No, later, after you left. Around midnight, she said. She didn't tell you?" Sam shakes his head, because they left at three in the morning. Phil nods, smiling his friendly smile. "You should ask her," Phil says. "Said she heard somebody prowling in the hall." He shrugs. "Might have been a raccoon or something, but you never know."

Goblin, gremlin, redcap, cait sith, chupacabra--"Yeah," Sam says and puts a hand to his head. He didn't think he'd had enough to drink for an actual hangover.

Phil laughs. "I'll lay off for a couple hours, anyway," he says. He drops his hammer into the metal loop on his tool belt.

"Thanks," Sam says. He nods and goes back inside. He closes and locks the door, leans back against it for a minute, his eyes closed.

When he opens them, Jess is there, wearing her white, fake satin nightgown. He gasps and closes his eyes again.

"What?" she says. He feels her hands on his arms, her fingers and palms running up and over his shoulders. "What's wrong?"

He shakes his head and forces himself to look at her; alive, still alive. "Nothing."

Jess's forehead wrinkles, her beauty mark like a third eye--"My big ugly _mole_," he has heard her complain bitterly into the mirror.

He touches her cheek. He says, "Why didn't you tell me someone broke into the building while I was gone?"

She rolls her eyes and stops looking worried. "I heard some weird noises, and then I was talking to Phil on Sunday and it came up. I wasn't scared or anything; it was probably a stray cat." She shrugs and reaches up to give him a kiss.

Sweet slight taste of mint after she pulls away.

"Do you want breakfast?" she asks as she walks into the kitchen.

"Waffles," Sam says automatically. He hasn't had a proper homemade waffle in a year. "Please?"

 

Sam drowns his waffles in strawberry syrup and starts slogging through them. Jess makes a face and eats her Weetabix daintily.

"What did your dad say about the scholarship?" she asks.

"My dad?" he says through a mouthful of food. Jess wrinkles her nose so he swallows. He got out of the habit of manners. He remembers an entire conversation with Dean regarding the most fun ways to kill zombies, their mouths full of mashed potatoes and country-fried steak. He tries again, "Sorry. What about my dad?"

"What did he say about the scholarship?"

Sam looks at his fork, dripping with milky, melted margarine and dark pink syrup. He dips it into the lake of margarine and syrup on his plate, lifts it out again, watches it drizzle, then drip quickly, drip slowly--

"Sam."

"I haven't called." Why would he?

Jess wraps her hand around his wrist and he puts his fork down. "Why not?"

He doesn't know what to say. In this not-his life, maybe it would be okay, maybe with everything that's happened, he should call his father because he _can_, because he _can't_ in his real life. If he ever wakes up there. If Jess takes his shoulder and tells him to wake up, if he opens his eyes and Dean is leaning over him. If he wakes up in Texas--

"Whatever happened last weekend," Jess is saying, "he'd want to know that you got it. You know he would." She smiles a small, knowing smile, "And don't try to tell me you're not dying to tell your mom."

Over her shoulder, Sam sees their refrigerator, covered in notes and bills and photographs and take-out menus. He sees, suddenly, on the freezer door, near the handle, a four-by-six photo of his family. He recognises his short haircut from early junior year, he recognises Dean in a rugby shirt, he recognises his father with a USMC cap on and beside him, a blond woman. His mother.

"Yeah," he says.

Jess smiles happily. "Good. You've got the dishes this morning, okay? I need to work on my building systems paper."

"Sure," Sam says.

His mother.

Jess puts her spoon and bowl and juice glass on the counter and kisses him on the top of the head on her way to her computer. He stays at the table, his plate of sugar and fat congealing in front of him.

His mother.

 

At eleven Jess rushes around the apartment getting dressed, collecting books and binders. She's going to the library to see if she can find some journal she forgot for her paper.

"I can't believe it took me a week to realise it," she says, slamming the closet door shut. She twists herself into a Death Angel hoodie in the living room; it takes her three tries because she's only got half her shirt on and also because she's already slung her messenger bag across her chest. "Fuck," she says despairingly, and Sam finally reaches out to help her.

He untangles her sleeves and straps and holds her bag for her while she buttons and zips.

"There," he says, re-settling her bag on her shoulder.

"Thanks," she says. She blows hair out of her face and smiles at him. "Don't forget to call your parents."

He smiles briefly. "I won't." He bends down to kiss her goodbye and feels, remembers the way she folds her arms around his neck, tucking one hand inside the other's sleeve.

"Bye," she says at the door, "love you!"

"Love you too," he says and the door is slamming shut. He can hear her running down the stairs, and then she's gone and everything is quiet.

Slowly, he sits on the couch, his hands open over his knees. His phone is in his backpack on the floor. He stares at the pocket, imagining reaching over, unzipping it, pulling out his phone, finding his parents' number--his _parents_. As he is wondering what his mother's voice sounds like, the pocket of his backpack starts ringing.

By the third ring, he's fumbling for the zipper pull, rifling through pens and highlighters and expired copy cards.

The screen on his phone says "Dean (Work)."

He presses it to his ear and says, "Hi," desperately relieved.

"Hey," Dean says. "You didn't call me back, man."

"I know--"

"I was kind of worried," Dean says, and he sounds like he really was.

Sam sits on the floor, leaning against the coffee table. He almost wants to laugh. "I'm sorry."

"Whatever, just--you sounded upset. I thought something might have happened with the meeting. Or, you know, a real disaster, like you left your toothbrush at the cabin."

Sam laughs. "No," he says. "Nothing--nothing terrible."

There is a long silence, half comfortable and half not.

"So?" Dean says, and he sounds amused. "I'm kind of trying to work here. We're a little backlogged."

"If you hadn't taken yesterday off--" Sam says, and Dean called _him_ anyway.

"Shut up," Dean says, laughing this time. Sam has never heard him laugh like that. "Did you get the scholarship thing?"

Sam picks at a fraying seam on his jeans. "Yeah."

"Dude," Dean says.

"I know."

"Seriously, Sam."

"I _know_."

"Did you call Mom and Dad?"

Sam closes his eyes and drops the phone to his lap for a moment. He opens his eyes and looks down at it, at the seconds ticking by on the call-time counter, at Dean's name in pixels.

He lifts the phone again. "Not yet."

"Maybe get on that, before Dad sells the house for your tuition?" Sam can't tell if Dean's honestly annoyed or still kidding, and that's a very strange sensation.

"Yeah," he says.

Dean exhales close enough to his end of the line for Sam to hear it, and clears his throat. "You got anything important to do today?" he asks.

He should be working on term papers and studying. He's probably forgotten a lot more than he thinks in the last year, but--"Not really."

Sam hears something like papers shuffling through the line. "Okay," Dean says. "I'm going to leave in like half an hour and come down. I'm hungry."

Dean is going to leave work early, after not going in at all yesterday, and drive an hour, because he's hungry. "You don't have food in Pleasanton?"

"No, Sam, we don't. It's a sad state of affairs."

"You sure you should be taking off early--"

"Dude, I write classified ads," Dean says. "The place is not going to burn down if I blow off a couple of hours."

Classified ads? Sam shakes his head. "Okay."

"See you in a while," Dean says. "Bye, Sammy."

Sam doesn't correct him. "Bye, Dean."

 

Sam wastes two hours moving from sitting on the living room floor with his phone to laying on his bed with his phone. He stops at his computer to poke half-heartedly at his sociology paper, but his phone waits there, beside the keyboard, in his peripheral vision like a bad omen, so he takes it and sits on his bed and scrolls through his contacts.

And there, under "McLeary," is "Mom &amp; Dad."

He falls back onto the bed, staring up at the ceiling, thinking about the last time he collapsed onto his bed like that, wondering, not knowing what was happening to him.

Shouldn't he be happy? Hasn't he imagined that he had this life? Hasn't he wanted it, dreamed of it? Wouldn't he give anything for it?

He hears, feels hoofbeats in his chest, his pulse speeds to match them, and he remembers the sensation, and an imperative, but he can't place any of it, can't remember--

Someone is knocking at the door.

Sam gets up and his heart slows as he turns the handle.

Dean grins. "Hey, Sammy," he says. He gestures with his hand, car keys dangling. "Let's go."

Across the street and about twenty feet down the block a black 1964 Fairlane sits, sensible angles and lines sharpened with chrome.

"Nice," Sam says. He traces the headlight crown on the passenger side.

"You saw it two days ago," Dean says. The door doesn't creak like the Impala's always did--does--will--might. "Stop feeling my car up and get in."

Sam smiles and does as he's told.

When Dean turns the engine over, something sweet comes out of the radio. There is no tape deck, no CD player, just a 1964 Ford stock push-button AM radio in perfect, gleaming mint condition. And it's playing something--Sam feels his eyebrows rising and Dean punches the left-most button. A deep-voiced man starts talking about oil prices and corroding pipelines.

"I was thinking Golden Gate park," Dean says, glancing away, changing the subject, familiar.

"Sounds good," Sam says. He looks out the window at his neighbourhood gliding past.

Sam remembers driving north through South San Francisco in August, over the bridge, into sand and green. Miles and miles of green and green-blue. Beaches and shorelines and bay after small bay filled with blue. Chris and Jess had built an illegal fire about ten feet from the water and Chris's girlfriend Monica had taught them how to make Kahlua s'mores, the sun setting smoky orange at her back, her curly red hair like a crown of flames. He'd been pretty drunk by then, the sky a scythe of jade melted with sapphire, carbon-dark clouds streaked across. He can taste the marshmallow, burnt and liquid, laced with chocolate and alcohol. He'd laughed so hard he had choked on a graham cracker piece and Jess had tried to give him the Heimlich.

He wonders if that even happened here, because he remembers getting a postcard from Dean that morning, a giant cloisonne fish somewhere in Wisconsin and no discernable message on the back, just a lopsided sketch of Spinal Tap's logo and the Impala's license plate number. Closest thing Dean ever had to a return address. The stamp was lopsided too. Thirty-seven cents, Arthur Ashe.

Dean only ever asked that Sam be where Dean expected him to be.

 

They have dinner at a tiny Indian restaurant in the city, the walls hung with orange and gold fabric, bright green table cloths. Dean says he loves this place and when the waitress takes their order, he uses all the right words; no "not spicy" or "do you have anything that looks like a hamburger?" for this Dean. The girl smiles at him and corrects his accent and they call each other by their first names.

She goes to get Sam's Heineken and Dean's Vishnu.

"Funny story," Dean says. "I've been eating here for two years or something, and like, last month, we finally realised that I'd stayed with Supriya's cousin in Dehra Dun."

Sam blinks. "Where?"

"You have the worst memory of anybody I've ever met, dude," Dean says. "Dehra Dun. India? Backpacking after college? Dad threatening to kill me if I didn't call every day?"

Dean, backpacking, college. "Oh. Right," Sam says. Where did Dean go to school? What was his major? Where else did he travel? Sam wants to ask if he went to Europe. He's always thought Dean would like Germany, Belgium, Austria: dark forests filled with the memories of dark things and long, fast-moving highways.

Dean shakes his head and grins at Supriya as she sets his beer on the table. "Thanks," he says.

"You're welcome," she replies, smiling. She doesn't even look at Sam.

 

They're sitting on a bluff, the Fairlane parked behind them, studiously perpendicular to the horizon. The sky is purpling and turning pink towards dusk. San Francisco is like a trail of tiny, bright-coloured jelly beans along the coast, across the bay. Dean is sitting with his elbows on his knees in khaki shorts and a long-sleeved North Face shirt, hunched over, staring out at the Pacific. A scraped-up green Nalgene bottle hangs from one of his hands, lid half screwed on.

"Did I say congratulations on the scholarship?" Dean says.

"Not exactly," Sam says.

"Yeah, I guess not. Congratulations," Dean says. "I'm proud of you, Sammy."

Sam says, "Thanks." Hearing it doesn't feel the way he thought it would.

"First Winchester to get a post-graduate education," Dean says.

"Yep," Sam says. In his other life, he was the first Winchester to go to college at all.

"Childhood dream realised, bright future ahead." Dean's put on this radio announcer voice. "Everything you ever wanted, in your hands right now, or just around the corner, waiting for you to take those final steps."

Sam laughs. "Yeah, sure."

Dean shifts where he's sitting, a restless frustrated movement that is so familiar--Sam stops laughing and looks away. The bluff is quiet.

"Do you ever feel like it's not everything you've ever wanted?" Dean asks.

Does he ever--Sam swallows. He says, "What do you mean?"

Dean shrugs and gestures sharply at the ocean and his car, somehow at the same time. "Do you ever feel like maybe this isn't how it's supposed to go?"

Sam clenches his teeth to keep his mouth from falling open. He shakes his head and asks, "Do you?"

Dean makes an uncomfortable face, like he's picking splinters out of his fingers. "I've got a good job," he says. "Great job. Easy, fun, good money for helping stupid people sell their shit." He smiles quickly, slightly. "And the receptionist is hot." Sam smiles too. Dean spins the lid on his water bottle tight and sets it on the ground firmly. He looks troubled again. "But, you know, sometimes I feel like I missed something. Like something happened, keeps happening, and I'm just not paying attention, but if I did--" He kicks the brown-green grass with the heel of his boot. "I don't know, Sam."

A hard breeze blows up over the edge of the bluff, a chilly wind. Sam crosses his arms over his chest. He has no idea what to say to that. He can count on one hand the number of times Dean's actually come to him for advice, even like this, sideways. He only needs one finger to count the number of times Dean has actually taken it.

"How about them 49ers," Dean says, and his laugh sounds like a dying breath. "Never mind, man--"

"Don't," Sam says. "Give me a second."

Dean nods and reaches for his water bottle.

The phrase "quarter-life crisis" goes through Sam's mind, but he knows that's not it. He watches a blindingly white sailboat execute a tight turn in the bay. "If--" he starts, and stops.

He sees Dean turn towards him in his peripheral. He tries again. "If you think there's something else you should be doing, you should try to figure it out," he says. "I mean, there's a lot to be said for looking to what you've got and the life you're living for satisfaction, but sometimes that's not--enough."

He looks at Dean, makes eye contact and sees the relief in his face. Sam says, "Sometimes there is something else out there."

"Like the truth," Dean says and he smiles so Sam smiles back.

"Yeah," Sam says.

 

Dean drops him off at eleven-thirty. He says something about Sam not getting enough sleep. Sam lies and says he doesn't have a class tomorrow.

"Thanks, man," Dean says as Sam is getting out of the car.

Sam looks back and shrugs. Dean's Astarte charm isn't hanging around his neck, but he does wear a stiff elephant hair bracelet. Sam remembers Dean struggling to pull the knots tight, remembers their father saying an incantation over it, remembers Dean asking Dad what it was for and Dad not answering. Sam knows now that the bracelet is for peace, family, loyalty, eternity. He never asked his father what the incantation was. Sam wonders why Dean would wear it in this place, if he knows what it means, how he came to have it. He doesn't ask; right now isn't the time for another story about backpacking in India.

"Seriously," Dean says.

"No problem," Sam says.

Dean reaches across the car and touches Sam's shoulder, then pushes at his back. "Get out, I still have to drive home and get up for work in the morning."

"Okay." Sam closes the door firmly and Dean raises an open hand, the way he always waves. Sam raises his hand back and stands on the dark curb until the Fairlane turns a corner two blocks up and disappears from view.

There's a note from Jess on the kitchen table. She found the journal for her paper, but also realised she's missing three other sources, so she's staying in Catherine's room on campus for the night.

He smiles, strips down to his boxers, and crawls under the covers on his side of the bed.

 

*

 

"Ride the white pony," Dean says.

Sam shakes his head; he wants to tell Dean not to keep asking. He can't--he doesn't know why, he never knows, and it feels like he's had this dream a hundred times, but he knows he hasn't.

"You have to do it this time," Dean says.

Sam puts his arms around himself. He looks at Dean and he's going to, he's going to tell him he can't do it.

"Promise me, Sammy," Dean says, and he's not quite begging, but he's as close as Sam has ever seen him. "Promise you will."

Sam shakes his head again. "I _can't_," he says. He can't even explain.

Dean looks like he wants to hit him, but there's no time for a real fight. Dean presses his fist against Sam's chest.

"Ride the white pony," he says in a hard voice, and then he walks into the night, the darkness made of pitch and motor oil and the deepest cracks in the longest tunnels.

Sam blinks, and the pony is there, staring at him with those eyes. His heart speeds up again, he feels compelled to back away but he doesn't. He puts up a hand to stop it coming any closer. Before the pony can issue its command, invitation, declaration, he says, "No," for the second time.

The pony shakes its head and paws at the dry earth, snorting. It turns and glares at him from one wide, dark eye, lip curling up over its pristine teeth. It turns its back to him and kicks up dust in his face as it gallops away. Gritty dirt in his eyes. Sam tries to brush it away, it burns, but his arms are tangled in his blanket.

He is breathing hard; his heart is beating deep like a bass drum in his chest. The blank ceiling stares down at him, white turned grey by moonlight.

Past his heartbeat and panting, outside of the bedroom, he can hear something like the sound of bare feet scuffling on hardwood. He is suddenly gapingly awake and a hundred explanations are chasing themselves in his stomach: Jess, Dean, it's an old building and old buildings make odd noises. Jess heard something weird on Friday night.

He slides out of bed and takes the bat from its corner by the door, knows better than to check his sock drawer for his bowie knife. As he moves through the doorway into the living room, he realises the sound is not coming from inside the apartment at all.

Could be Phil, could be their upstairs neighbour Hannah who has a habit of thinking she lives one floor closer to the ground than she does.

Goblin, gremlin, redcap, cait sith, chupacabra--

Sam lifts the bat over one shoulder and puts his hand on the doorknob. There are two ways to open a door when there might be something nasty behind it: straight on, and risk it jumping right on you, or sideways, and risk letting it into your nice, safe, non-bloodstained room.

Sam goes for straight on, because there's no one to keep track of where the thing might go if it gets inside.

He takes a deep breath, holds, hears the noise get louder and then quieter again. He turns the doorknob slowly, by heartbeat-long degrees.

When the knob stops turning, he pulls the door open, just as slowly.

The noise stops. Sam stops.

The noise starts again, changed, like it knows it's been heard. Sam takes another deep breath. He jerks the door open and swings the bat out at chest-height.

He sees a dark blur shoot down the hallway, towards the outside wall. He hears a drawn-out nasal hiss, and he follows.

A line of moonlight cuts into an otherwise dark corner, and he sees an eye illuminated, yellow and close to the ground, elliptical pupils. Another long hiss, no scent of sulphur, no static or deadened feeling in the air.

Sam drops his arms to his side, the bat brushing his bare leg. He backs down the hall and the cat cautiously moves into the light.

It's not even black, it's tortoiseshell, black and brown and red, with a tiny white cravat.

"God dammit," Sam says.

The cat crouches, one foot forward, and hisses up at him again.

 

It's six in the morning and he can't fall back asleep, so he puts Muse on his iTunes and works on his sociology paper for almost six hours. He's had nine cups of coffee by the time he stumbles into his Philosophy of Law lecture at noon.

Chris raises his eyebrows and asks where the hell Sam was last night, and exactly how much fun he had.

"Went out with my brother," Sam says, not thinking, because he never told Chris about Dean either.

Chris smacks him in the shoulder. "Why didn't you call me? Dean is awesome for a mid-week throw-down."

Sam puts his head down on his books and tries not to make any pitiful noises.

 

Jess is baking when he gets home at four, her hair struggling free from a topknot. She's got her "don't kiss me, I'm cooking" apron on over the Stanford sweatshirt Sam wore when he tried out for Jeopardy! in sophomore year. She accidentally shrunk it the one time they mixed their laundry, and kept it to show her victory over unequal work and the patriarchy.

He kisses her on the cheek and asks if she finished her paper. He knows she did. She only bakes when she's accomplished something.

"Yes," she groans, leaning back as he hugs her, her hands wrist-deep in sugar-brown cookie dough. "Why do I need this class again?"

Sam laughs and sways with her in his arms.

 

Around six, Chris and his new girlfriend Sophia show up with a six-pack of Smirnoff coolers and a bag of Tostitos the size of a small child.

Jess grins and says, "Surprise!" Her hands spread at her hips, her chin cocked.

Sam shakes his head and kisses her. Chris tells them to get a room, and goes looking for salsa. Sophia laughs nervously. She's only been dating Chris for a couple of weeks.

Five minutes later, Hyung heaves himself through the door, laden with shopping bags.

"You can start the party now!" he shouts.

A dozen more people show up, including the ethics TA who'd suggested the scholarship in the first place, and there is drinking, Coldplay and James Blunt and Tori Amos, people plugging their MP3 players into his computer at random. Someone pulls Scrabble from the shelf under the TV and Hyung kicks ass three games in a row with words like "whizbang," "quetzals," and "highjack."

"'Whizbang' is not a word," Jess complains as Sam concedes defeat. Hyung gleefully pulls out his Scrabble dictionary and shows her, and Jess says, "Scrabble is stupid!" She gestures with her third Bacardi's.

She sits on the arm of Sam's chair or on the floor, leaning against his legs, or in his lap, her nose resting on his pulse.

At one in the morning, Chris and Sophia are the last to leave, Sophia leaning heavily on Chris's shoulder.

"Get home safe," Sam says, and Chris winks.

"Public transit all the way, baby," he says.

Jess laughs.

Sam locks the door behind them and Jess pulls him by the hand back through the living room, into the bedroom.

"Lay down with me," she says. He nods and she smiles without showing her teeth, but so sweetly.

She pulls his shirt off over his head and draws him down, pushes him onto his side. He closes his eyes as she curls up behind him, her cheek on the back of his head.

"I love you," she says reverently.

Sam's throat is constricted with feeling and he falls asleep before he can answer.

 

*

 

"Don't even say it," Sam says as soon as they reach the car. "I won't."

Dean slams the trunk closed so hard it bounces open again, grabs Sam's shoulder, pulls him around, his face is as hard as stone. "Ride the white pony. That's the deal," he says. "You have to do it."

"What deal?" Sam asks, bewildered.

"If you don't," Dean says as if Sam didn't speak, "everything will go away."

"Everything." Sam pulls back. "Wait, what everything--"

Dean spreads his arms. The car with its gaping trunk, their equipment gleaming silver and steel, polished wood and dry mud, these dreams that Sam keeps having. The night, which is now so dark Sam can't even see the grass on the dry ground anymore.

"Everything, Sam!" Dean shouts. "All of it!"

Understanding sinks in his chest, fury uncurls in his stomach and Sam grabs Dean's jacket at the shoulder, hauls him up. "Jess?" he spits. Dean's mouth tightens and he doesn't answer.

"Mom?" Sam growls. "Dad?"

Dean tears Sam's hand off of him and backs away, silent. He sits on the lip of the trunk and puts a hand to his head.

Painful inkling of the full meaning of this--a _deal_\--Sam touches his forehead briefly, drops his hand to his side, fisted.

"You?" Sam says.

Dean shakes his head. "I'll wake up."

"And I'll wake up."

Dean nods.

"And everything will be the way it was."

Dean nods again.

Sam can't resist saying it, "The way it's _supposed_ to be."

Dean doesn't nod, doesn't move. "Maybe it's not," he says flatly.

Sam closes his eyes. He reins in his anger and the disappointment he's not going to examine. He leans his hand against the open lid of the trunk and turns his face into his arm, the mud on his jacket dry after three nights of dreaming.

They're out of time. He feels it approach, out of the corner of his eye he sees Dean look up expectantly. "Go," Sam says.

Dean looks over at him. "You'll do it?" he asks, dull hope in his voice.

Sam pushes away from the car and turns his back on Dean. "Just go, okay."

He hears the dry rustle of unseen grass as Dean walks away.

In the dream, Dean can't even remember that it isn't his real life, and he's still not happy. Sam would--Sam would like Jess to be alive again. He'd like to know his mother. He wants his father back. He just doesn't think he can give up reality for those things.

He hears the pony breathing behind him and he turns to look it in the eyes. It blinks at him and tosses its head.

He doesn't think he can give up Dean for those things.

"Ride," it says.

Sam shakes his head. He won't let Dean give up himself.

"No," he says.

Third time.

There is terrible, awful, overwhelming power in threes.

The pony rears and makes a sound like the rending of flesh stretched over bone until it breaks. Its hooves scrape at the dark sky and tear it until the stars are visible again, sparking its coat to blinding brightness.

The trunk on the Impala thunks closed. The pony's hooves hit the ground like lightning; the scent of scorched grass hangs in the electrified air.

"Price," the pony says, and the word echoes in Sam's head until it sounds like _price_ and _prize_ and _pay_ all at the same time.

The pony turns and gallops away, the tail lights staining its white coat pink and blood red.

Sam stands on the plain somewhere outside Bee Caves, Texas, listening to the silent night, waiting to wake up.

 

*

 

Sam opens his eyes, sees the stalactite-textured motel room ceiling, the square glass light fixture, and is awake. He feels refreshed, fully rested, a bone-deep sense of rejuvenation; he hasn't slept like that--ever. He blinks and sits up, the floral comforter and scratchy blankets bunched around his stomach. Dean is suddenly in his view, in a chair by the window, right across the room. Awake. In jeans and Daytons and his leather jacket, drinking a cup of coffee.

Sam stares at him and doesn't think of something to say. Doesn't ask where and when and how Dean made the deal, if they were ever in Bee Caves at all; doesn't ask what they owe the pony. Sam remembers Jess's warm arms around his chest the last time they fell asleep, her cotton shirt against his back, her golden hair falling over his shoulder, her breath against his neck; the dream, the solidity of it, the power of whatever the pony was, is, whatever it represented; anger, hardening into a stone in his stomach.

"Good morning, Sam," Dean prompts. He cradles his coffee cup in two hands, like it matters.

Sam can't help the acid in his voice; he can't make Dean understand that all he's ever wanted was to choose his own life, not have it chosen for him. "What's so good about it?" he says.

"It's here," Dean says. He shrugs. He looks away from Sam and takes a sip of his coffee.

 

End.

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [White Pony (The Men on the Chessboard Remix)](https://archiveofourown.org/works/240947) by [celli](https://archiveofourown.org/users/celli/pseuds/celli)




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